


In Mind, Flesh, and Bone

by Trixree



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Magical Realism, Excessive World Building, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-28
Updated: 2018-07-11
Packaged: 2019-05-29 17:57:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15078569
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Trixree/pseuds/Trixree
Summary: Magic is as intrinsic to human flesh as the act of creation is to destruction.Wherein, Steve Rogers makes some feelings, Bucky Barnes gets lucky again, and Sam Wilson tends a garden of tragic super soldiers.





	1. Steve

The thing about the future isn’t how much everything has changed, it’s how much everything has stayed the same. For all the glittering lights and loud music and air pollution in the world of the future, or, as it is, world of the present ( _present_ , he keeps having to remind himself. _This is the present, now_ ) the people of the future (present) are the same. People are loud and obnoxious now and they were loud and obnoxious then, too. (He thinks of Stark and the incessant snap of his fingers, the pitch of his voice when he thinks he’s saying something particularly intelligent, the blaring music shaking the floor of his workshop). People are unkind now and people were unkind then. (He thinks of mass shooting after mass shooting. He thinks of police shootings of unarmed black children. He thinks of the woman he saw in Central Park kick a stray dog.) People are just as loving now as they were then, too. (He thinks of numerous charity foundations for sick kids like he is— _used to be_. He thinks of Pride. He thinks of the smile the barista at his favorite coffee shop gives to every customer.)

There are things that have changed, too, of course there are. Smart phones. Movies. Netflix. Even things as innocuous as stove tops are so different now. The most surprising thing about the future isn’t the gadgets, though. (He thinks of Bucky, shirtless in the June heat, reading aloud the countless sci-fi novels he coveted throughout their youth… the way the words dripped off his tongue and the gleam in his eyes as he spun tale after tale of increasingly outrageous inventions… He thinks, privately, cell phones aren’t all that different from the surreal technology Buck had dreamed about having one day.)  

When you get down to thinking about it, the differences aren’t all that big of a deal. Same old world, same old people, just finding newer ways to love and hurt each other in equal measure. But there is one thing. One, kind of important thing.  


See, the thing is, Luck Magics weren’t so universally _despised_ in his day.

***

>             Little is known about Luck Magic. The consensus among the scientific community is that of the revised classification of the original 1899 _Index of Magics_ from the Loswell Institute, Chicago. It reads that Luck Magic, _Type A.A. (for official classification, see Appendix B)_ , is the “direct and conscious influence of the outcome of a scenario via thought” (Loswell Institute, _Index of Magics: Revisited_ _,_ 1967 edition).
> 
>  In the middle ages, Type A.A., known as Luck Magic, was considered “pure witchcraft”, a notion spread by the lord of an Italian city-state in the 10th Century. It is said a thief used his magic to rig a bet on which a large sum of money was placed. The thief was reportedly stoned to death the same day. However, citizens reported seeing the man alive and well the next day. When approached, it is reported the man admitted to using his magic to survive the stoning. He was hanged publicly the next day.
> 
> The notion that Type A.A. citizens were untrustworthy con-men at best, witches and devils at worst, continued throughout much of the coming centuries and a drastic population decrease is estimated to have taken place. Type A.A. magic was considered to be taboo in western cultures and a rapidly growing number of eastern cultures. However, from the 1800s through the end of WWII, public opinion shifted due to the positive and almost fantastical role of luck magic in story telling and fantasy writing and public approval was on the rise—until about 1948.
> 
> The Luck Trials and Riots of 1948-1950, known commonly as “Field Fires”, a term coined in America, coming from an old slur for Type A.A. subjects, "greens". The imagery of green fields of grass burning in fires was associated with this period for the rash of killings of Type A.A. subjects.
> 
> Legislation guarding against discrimination of Type A.A. citizens exist in the United States today only in California.
> 
> _From T.R. Hartlund’s,_ _A Layman’s Chronicle of Magics and Magic Trials_ _: 2009 edition_

***

It’s one of the first conversations they have, after.

“You know, when I was six, they thought I had Aptitude Magics,” Stark says with the subtlety and volume control of a jack hammer.

“What.”

“Built my first engine, then. First circuit board was at four, but the engine-at-six-thing really sealed the deal on the ‘uncannily gifted in a specific area’ shtick.”

It’s been only twelve hours since the battle of New York. They haven’t even started calling it that, yet. Steve has barely slept and Stark looks like he hasn’t at all. After an hour of staring helplessly at the ceiling of a minimally damaged guest-room in Stark Tower, Steve had managed to drag himself out of the lavish bed (only lightly sprinkled with dry wall) and up to the penthouse crater which formerly housed the Norse god of mischief. (There's a big difference in the world of the future, old gods falling from the sky, strolling through places they probably shouldn't be giving some pretty run-of-the-mill-megalomaniac-human speeches about power.) The sun was just starting to crawl above the skyline of ruined buildings when, without warning, Stark had appeared like he had simply willed himself there.

Steve stares at him. “And… you don’t?”

Stark looks at him blankly, takes a long drink from a glass of some strong smelling alcohol and continues to stare.

“Don’t what?” Stark asks.

“Have Aptitude Magic?”

“Don’t you know it’s rude to ask a lady that on the first date? You’re gonna’ have to woo me first, Spangles.” Stark sets his drink down, claps his hands together once, and starts to tap a steady rhythm on something in his chest. A faint blue glow shines through his shirt and Steve can’t help but wonder what kind of futuristic upgrade _that_ could be.

Stark continues to talk _at him_ about nothing for another five minutes or so, looking unhinged, with sleepless rings so heavy-set under his eyes they look drawn on. (The rush to catch him as he went plummeting down from the hole in the sky, thinking, achingly, desperately, _if I had Luck_ _would it make a difference?_ as he crouched over this man—the child of a man he once knew—and hoped desperately…)

“—and I’m sorry, not for the ‘you came out of a bottle’ thing, I’m still gonna’ stand my ground and say you deserved that, a little, just a little. Honestly, forget the shield, you shoulda’ just roasted those Nazis alive with your cutting insults that hit remarkably close to buried trauma…but the apology I was trying to get across? I’m sorry about your whole,” Stark gestures encompassing at Steve’s whole body, “suddenly-in-the-future-and-everyone-I-know-is-dead, thing.” Steve doesn’t flinch, not because it doesn’t sting, but because he’s been so thoroughly steam rolled by the man’s manic word-vomit that he’s incapable of doing anything but _trying to catch up._

“Well, just… if you need anything, technology help, housing—speaking of that, wanna’ move in? I’ve already started drawing up plans for your floor, not just your floor, though, oh you should see what I’m going to do for Bruce—anyways, if you need anything, I’ll be here, your cutting remarks about my worth as a person aside.” Stark awkwardly touches Steve’s shoulder, shakes it a little. “Good talk, Cap.”

He’s gone before Steve can pick his jaw off the floor.

And it’s later, much later, as he’s sitting in the apartment Stark has rented for him, when he remembers to wonder what kind of magic Stark has. He thinks to himself, decisively, that it doesn't really matter anyways. 

***

Of course his type is in his file. He was a soldier. Of course it would be. Steve knows Natasha knows. It’s obvious in the way she looks around his apartment the first time he invites her in. Her eyes linger subtly on the walls. (He knows she wants him to see she’s looking. If she didn’t want him to notice, he wouldn’t have.)

Resigned, not even five minutes into their usual comfortable banter, he wordlessly gets his sketchbook out of a drawer.

“You don’t have to,” she says in that calm, even tone she has.

He shrugs and hands it over anyways.

Somewhere in his file it says in neat, clear font, STEVEN G. ROGERS, MAGIC TYPE P.D., APTITUDE MAGICS. DOCUMENTED APTITUDE IN ARTWORK, MEDIUM(S) SKETCH. Unremarkable, for Captain America. It’s nothing compared to Bucky’s Luck Magic (His hands pressed their luck into his bones, into his medicine, into his blankets and his handkerchiefs, like prayers _let him live one more day, just one more day_ over and over again until the ground Steve walked when Bucky was behind him was saturated with it.) Really, given perspective, what good are a couple of better-than-average sketches compared to what Bucky could do? 

Natasha, when she leaves a few hours later, kisses him on the cheek, as she does. “They’re remarkable, Steve, really.” (A voice from a different time, _They’re remarkable, Steve_ and it’s Peggy. _They’re remarkable, Stevie_ and it’s Bucky. _They’re remarkable, Steven_ and it’s his mother and it’s Erskine and the Commandos--)

He shakes his head at her, thinks his face is doing a Sad Thing because she smiles at him like she knows it hurts to hear her say it in the voice of everyone he’s ever loved who are dead and gone and _ashes_ now. ( _A magic like Bucky’s could have saved them, maybe_ , he thinks covetously at night sometimes when he’s alone and it hurts the worst. _Could have saved me, maybe.)_

Natasha never asks, but Steve always shows her his art. She takes some. Sends him pictures of them, framed professionally and hanging in her home (no identifying landmarks, obviously. He’s never seen her house but he’s convinced it’s there. Clint swears it, at least).

Seeing them there, even in pictures, makes him feel something like lucky again.

***

Some people’s magic is, for the most part, indiscernible. Sam Wilson’s magic, however, is a _supernova._

From the moment Steve meets him ( _On your left_ and suddenly Sam is cursing at him and laughing at the same time, the air around him and the space between them lit up with the force of his magic and Steve is curling towards him helplessly, a plant drawn to sunlight--) it was apparent that Sam was Type A.B.

His Organic Magic is inextricably sewn into everything he does. It’s in the reverence of his steps on the earth, the pull of his mouth and the life in his smile, the fire beneath his eyes and the laughter written in creases around them. It’s in watching him walk and just _knowing_ that, even without looking, his feet would never crush neither the smallest ant nor the smallest weed.

When they run the world is quiet and still dark, yet Sam seems to shine with pure energy like the first dive into the pool on a hot summer day, the embrace of a mother in the cold, the first taste of sunlight on your skin after a lifetime of darkness. When he collapses breathless to the ground afterwards, sweaty and exhausted, smiling still, Sam leaves the grass greener than he had found it.

Later, alone, long after their usual run morning run together, Steve finds himself in his apartment feeling vaguely sunburned by Sam, just Sam, nothing but Sam in his senses and he is dizzy for the rush of it.

(He finds himself in the company of Sam, his magic so thick and potent in the air, and is struck with unbearable guilt. With Sam, there is _chase_ where with Bucky there just _was,_ his magic so inextricable from Steve himself that to draw a distinction would be to remove his shadow, to cease to breathe. Sam's magic, however, he feels in the breathless thrill of combat and the weightlessness of his feet leaving the ground, even for an instant.)

Sam is a supernova with his wit and his charm and his looks and Steve feels like he’s burning.

(It doesn’t feel anything like luck.)

Maybe that could be a good thing.

***

“I don’t understand.”

“That’s the thing about prejudice, Steve,” Sam tells him one morning over stale gas station coffee. Sam makes a comically disgusted face at the first sip before sighing, resigned, and continuing to drink it anyways. “It doesn’t make sense.”

“It wasn’t like that, when we were kids. Buck was _showy_ with his magic and the gals loved it. He would do coin tricks with it, you know. He'd ask someone to guess heads or tails and he’d bet against ‘em every time. Had them toss. Came up as Buck said it would every time. Not one person ever cringed or called him… anything. It was entertaining. Charming. How does something change like that for so many people so fast?”

They’re two weeks into the search for Bucky, two weeks since the fall of the hellicarriers and the _end of the line_ and the bruises around Steve’s eyes are still yellow and the bruises in Steve’s mind are aflame with _who's Bucky, who's Bucky, who's Bucky?_ and his sketch books are filled with nothing but his longing and his rage cast in graphite and ink. ( _Look at me, chasing after you, oh how you would have laughed at that_ ).

This morning there was a story on the local news, a fourteen-year-old girl stuffed in a school locker and left there overnight by some classmates. The newscaster, a plain man with a plain voice and a plain face, read the girl’s statement to police dispassionately, “ _They thought I used my magic to cheat on a big test we’d had… They called me dirty…a cheater…_ green _. I thought they were going to kill me. I was gonna' die in there.”_

Steve watches as Sam finally gives up on the coffee. “People are horrible to each other,” Sam says, simply. They’re both tired in their bones, now. ( _I did that to you,_ Steve thinks and he dreams of supernovas and snow, if he dreams at all, these days.) Steve listened to Sam shift restlessly all night in a half-awake stupor, again. ( _I did that to you_ and the guilt is so rotten on his tongue). Sam, god love him, doesn’t mention how red Steve’s eyes are.

They don’t bring up Luck Magic again.

 

***

> Type A.D. Magic, ( _See Index 3 for full classification)_ , Aptitude Magic, commonly known as "Skill Magic" or "Ability Magic", deals primarily with a subject’s innate and remarkable skill in a specialized area. For example, a subject with Type A.D. may have an unprecedented athletic prowess. Notable historical figures who were Type A.D. were Steven Grant Rogers (Captain America) who was a WWII hero whose magic manifested in his hyper-realistic artwork, and Albert Einstein whose magic manifested in his mathematical accomplishments. An estimated 4 in every 11 people are Type A.D. (Based on the latest international 2010 Magic survey by the Reiknson Corporation).
> 
> From _The Encyclopedia of Magic Types: Oxford Edition_  
> 


	2. Sam

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is a little shorter but the next one will be much longer, I promise!

Organic magic was always strong in Sam’s family. His mother had come from a family where an aptitude for organic magic flowed thick through their veins, as thick as their blood. It was coded into their DNA. His mother inherited his grandmother’s flower shop who in turn inherited it from her mother and so on and so forth. Some of his earliest memories are of his mother’s warm hands, sticky with aloe, tending to plants in that very store. His mother would hum and the plants would seem to hum in response, a joyous, pleased thrum bursting with life. There was always soil under his mother’s fingernails and there is always soil under his, even as short as he keeps them nowadays. 

 

Even on the hunt for a lost WWII hero turned brainwashed Hydra assassin, there is still dirt under Sam’s nails. There is life everywhere. Even in the dingy motels they stay at there is life. (A tangled weed curls out of a large crack in the ancient asphalt. Dandelions, still yellow, reach for the sun. At a distance, they are small puddles of sunshine gathered on the hot pavement. Sam passes by them and crouches down to run his index finger and thumb reverently over their stems, a small smile stretching his lips. When Sam straightens, he catches Steve staring at him with an indiscernible look in his eye. Steve is smiling.)

 

(The flowers are smiling too. Not literally, of course. But they open a little wider, their hue is a little brighter, and there’s a few new buds that have just begun their slow creep out of the cracking road.)

 

...

 

> _ Herbalists, botanists, holistic healers, gardeners, florists and more! The benefits of  _ _ ORGANIC MAGICS  _ _ are just as luscious as the products this active class magic produces! From sweet, rich teas to incredible winding gardens to rival even that of Eden,  _ _ ORGANIC MAGIC _ _ is filled with possibility! _
> 
>       From,  _ Organics:An Introductory Guide for Children  _ by Martha E. Hubrer and Joseph Burch  _ 1996  _ publication

 

...

 

Sam started collecting plants, like his mother, when he was very young. He was given his first plant, a flowering Coriander smelling heavily of herbs and earth on his tenth birthday. ( _ “You’re so full of life, Sam. So much potential. Coriander… coriander means hidden worth. Good things grow inside of you everyday. Your bravery, your kindness, your humor… Happy birthday, my love,”  _ he and his mother sat side by side in the evening light, rubbing the soil of the plant between their fingers, feeling the petals of each flower, feeling the plant respond to their combined magic, quivering with life as it grew more fragrant, lush, and strong with every caress.) 

 

He had to leave his garden behind to come with Steve. But see, Sam doesn’t miss his plants. In a way, Steve is a whole other type of garden, teeming with flowers upon flowers underneath his skin. Hyacinth drips from his hands in bursts of purple and blue, whispering of regret and constancy. Violet spills from his lips when he talks about Bucky, his loyalty and devotion ringing clear as a bell. Pink carnations are beneath his feet, each step taking him further away from a past he cannot return to, and yet, all he has lost is carried with him in stark remembrance. Angelica and bluebell are in his hair, a halo of inspiration and kindness. That is what Sam sees when he looks at Steve, sleeping, slumped over the passenger side door as they drive after yet another lead. 

 

Sam thinks about his mother’s shop. He thinks of bringing Steve there, smiling and happy (in a way he so rarely is these days), free of the things that haunt him, free of the “I should haves” and “I could haves”, as he knits him a flower crown to wear. Angelica and Bluebell. Inspiration and kindness. 

 

Steve jerks awake with a quiet gasp. 

 

“You okay?” Sam asks.

 

“Yeah, just… dreaming.” Steve takes a moment to study the road in front of them. The endless expanse of the desert stares back. 

 

“We’re in New Mexico now. About four more hours until we cross into Arizona. We’ve still got a long way to go until we reach the border.” Sam taps his fingers against the steering wheel. “Are we sure Stark is right with this one?”

 

Tony has been feeding them intel, any tips or hints or whispers of the Soldier ever since the fall of the helicarrier. It’s been a month and so far everything has been a dead end. The futility of their search coats the back of Sam’s throat like thick honey. He knows they won’t find Bucky until Bucky wants to be found. But still, he asks Steve, “where to next?” and they move forward. Steve searches. Sam follows. 

 

…

 

They’re sitting in a shitty motel room, watching a dust storm blow through the desert. It’s late evening and Rain splashes incessantly against the windows and the wind shakes the glass. The sky is a rusty orange and the sun was beginning to set already, making the sky dark far too early and messing with Sam’s sense of time. It’s so humid outside that Sam has taken to praying the AC doesn’t decide tonight is the night to crap out. He’s sitting in a (probably lice infested) chair that appears to be from the late 70s watching the storm when Steve resurfaces from his sketch. 

 

Steve disappears for hours into his work. Whenever it’s Sam’s turn to drive and there’s nothing much to be said between them, Steve is sketching. Whenever they’re resting in the hotel of the night, Steve is sketching. Whenever Sam wakes up, the first thing he sees is Steve sketching. (He’s enrapturing. The morning sun catches his blonde hair and lights it gold. His eyes are a sharp blue, his jaw is strong and set in concentration, and his mouth---) 

 

The point is, Steve can disappear into the page for long, quiet stretches of time. The good thing is Sam has gotten quite used to keeping himself occupied and content in silence after… ( _ Riley,  _ a treacherous part of him whispers) and Steve always lets him look at whatever he’s been working on. 

 

Steve emerges from the sketch of the night with a quiet, indecipherable huff of a laugh. He shakes his head a bit, like he’s found something very, very amusing but he’s frustrated about it. 

 

“You gonna share the joke?” Sam asks. 

 

“No joke, it’s just… not what I wanted to draw tonight,” Steve says. Sam levels him with a flat look before leaning over and snatching the sketchpad away from Steve’s grasp. (Steve let him, of course he did, Sam has seen this man move before, he knows his reflexes, the power contained underneath those miles and miles of skin.)

 

It’s a drawing of a man standing with his back to the viewer. It is simple, yet brutal in its simplicity. It is, without a doubt, the most beautiful thing Sam has ever seen. 

 

The man is drawn in thick, crowded lines on the right and soft, thin ones on the left creating a very startling sense of light, blinding light shining from somewhere just past his shoulder. (In contrast, it also creates an ominous and striking presence of darkness to the man’s right that almost seems to press in on him.) The detail on the man’s clothes are simple. Not every crease of the jacket he wears has been precisely drawn, nor is there a distinct texture to the fabric-- there’s only enough so that the absence of it isn’t so jarring or cartoonish. The real detail is in the man himself. 

 

His shoulders are broad, tense, and squared, like a man bracing himself for impact from an explosion. His feet are planted heavily onto the page as if he’s ready to hold back a tank with his body alone. His arms, fists clenched, hang at his sides. The features of the left hand are shown in full detail. Every wrinkle of his knuckles is visible. Every calice, every crooked nail, every smudge of shadow is purposeful and intensely lifelike. His other hand, however, is almost completely obscured by the dark shadow on his right side. It is only visible as a silhouette, but, as a silhouette with various depths of darkness in it. Sam thinks, if he stared at it long enough, he’d begin to think there was something moving inside of it, like looking into a pitch black room late at night when you’re alone. 

 

Every inch of the man is somehow assuring and deeply unsettling at the same time. There is the impression that this, this is someone who cannot be moved, this is someone that could stand against a tornado and not budge an inch. 

 

Sam realizes he’s been holding his breath since he began looking at the drawing. He inhales. (It is shaky.) 

 

“It’s Bucky, isn’t it?”

 

Steve is staring out into the room, eyes unfocused. He looks like he could cry at any moment. 

 

“No. It’s not.”

 

“Steve… You know, this soldier Hydra made… he may not be the man you remember, but… he is still Bucky.”

 

Steve laughs that tragic, almost whispered laugh. “No. He’s not. Not anymore.” 

 

Sam startles. Steve... Steve is _crying._

 

Steve cries like the poster boy for the emotionally repressed. He is completely still and silent. If not for the fat tears rolling down his cheeks and the terrible, anguished look in his eyes, it would be impossible to see the agony wracking his frame. Sam does the only thing he can do, the only thing Sam has ever done to help, he reaches out, and he touches. 

 

(Everything he touches blooms, comes alive and vibrant under his fingertips, under his body. There is a song under Sam's skin, running through his blood that calls to nature, and nature sings back. Together, they create a beautiful harmony. You can hear it in the stillness after the rain. You can hear it when a warm summer wind blows through a green field. You can hear it in the descent of dusk upon a forest. Some poets thought it was the sound of Heaven itself, something Dante would have wrote about.)

 

At the touch of Sam's hand to his shoulder, Steve collapses like a tree in a storm. His entire body curls around Sam's in the way a wailing infant reaches for their mother for the first time. 

 

"I got you, I've got you," Sam soothes as best he can. "We're gonna find him. We're gonna bring him home."

 

Only when it's quiet, and the rain outside has paused, does Sam realize-- Steve isn't a silent crier. He's just a quiet one. And every sound that escapes him, no matter how quiet, is like a knife to the chest. 

 

"I've got you." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for your wonderful and kind comments, it means a lot!
> 
> I haven't added more of the structure to this AU as of yet (as in the classes of magic and how many types there are etc) BUT that information does exist! It was the first thing I wrote down when I started this AU and I do plan to include it in the next chapter. (MAYBE MAYBE MAYBE, I'm working on another fic within this universe focusing on Tony because MAYBE, I came up with this AU around him, and MAYBE I'll have it posted within the week? MAYBE. And MAYBE that fic will definitely have a lot of that information. MAYBE.)
> 
> If you enjoyed, find me on [tumblr](http://trixree.tumblr.com/) and on [patreon!](https://www.patreon.com/TrixeeWrites)

**Author's Note:**

> If you enjoyed, find me on tumblr! [Wizard Senpai](http://wizard-senpai.tumblr.com)


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